by threshold | Jun 21, 2018 | General
Oh, the often maligned banner ad – small, sometimes obnoxious, often unseen. But in a digital landscape that is increasingly mobile-based — and where audience attention is limited to micro-breaks — the banner ad is a powerful workhorse in your arsenal of apartment marketing ideas.
According to the International Advertising Bureau, internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled over $20 billion in the second quarter of 2017 — that’s 23% growth from the previous year. Moreover, advertising delivered on a mobile device accounts for 54% of total internet advertising revenues.
What does this all mean? Banner ads are a huge and growing market, and hundreds of millions of people view them daily. It’s our agency’s job to cut through the clutter to help you market directly to your consumers.
Today, we’re going to explore six strategies our design team uses to create effective banner ads for our clients.
- Copy should be no longer than 5-10 words
The human brain can only process about five words per second, and with a banner ad, you only have about 2 seconds to grab someones attention and deliver a clear message. On that note, we recommend only having one action or message per ad for the sake of simplicity.
- Design it to look like an ad
Native ads that subtly plug an advertiser are great marketing idea for apartments, but that’s not the role of the banner ad. Again, since you have such a limited amount of time to provide a message to consumers, it needs to be very clear what you are (an ad) and what you’re selling. Use a subtle border around ads that are white or could otherwise blend into the background of a website, and add a CTA button for clarity.
- Use the most effective sizes
Why waste time and money with sizes that don’t statistically perform well? Here at Threshold/Carve, we only use the top performing ad sizes for our clients.
- Use uncluttered, bright images
Your ad will never stand out if the consumer doesn’t notice it. Consumers only glance at ads for a second, so be sure to use simple photography, with one, clear focal point to increase the clarity of your message.
- Keep branding consistent
Ensure that the banner ad makes use of your brand’s colors & fonts of the so it’s look and feel is consistent with the website its linking to. You don’t want to confuse consumers by making them think they clicked on the wrong link.
- Use bold colors & contrasting buttons
Use bright colors to draw consumer attention to your ad. This is especially important with call-outs and buttons, which should be contrasting colors for high visibility. This doesn’t mean your ad should be garish. If you use a photo for your banner ad with a blue sky background consider an orange button and orange action text.
Design matters, whether you’re designing something as complex as a logo as simple as a banner ad. If you need help with design strategies and apartment complex marketing ideas, feel free to shoot us an email or give us a call today.
by threshold | May 21, 2018 | General
Whether you’re coming up with apartment marketing ideas or you just need a new website, every business should have a solid strategy for helping customers find you locally. It’s getting harder to rank in the search engines on a local level, and that trend is only going to continue.
Google is constantly coming out with ways to filter out irrelevant sites that aren’t optimized. They now have a mobile-only search index which they use to show optimized sites that are ready for portable devices.
Here are some of the most effective actions you can take today to help visitors find you locally in 2018:
Keyword Strategy
Content is important for any website, as you need content to cater to local prospects. We recommend creating content that focuses on the local market. Be sure to include local terms, images, and other elements that are unique to your area. You should also be linking out to local authoritative businesses. This helps your credibility and will provide visitors with more value. Also, try not to use your top searched local keyword all over your titles, body content, and images. Instead, use a variety of localized keywords. This will help you get found for more terms and boost your local traffic.
Mobile-Friendly Site
Search engines are putting an emphasis on mobile-friendly content and websites. Not only are they giving these sites a boost in the search engines, but they’re also penalizing advertisers that don’t cater to mobile traffic. Mobile-friendly sites load content quickly, are secure, and give visitors a great mobile experience. Most people that search locally use their mobile device, so creating an optimized mobile site is one of the best marketing ideas for apartments to implement in 2018.
Google My Business
This platform is one of the keys to getting found locally, and a great place to start your local optimization journey. First, fill out your profile and make sure your content is optimized for a local audience. This content should include geo-modified terms like the name of your city and any important hotspots. Next, remember to link back to your Google My Business through Google+. This will help Google tie your website to your optimized My Business profile.
Website Speed
Your site could be filled with the most effective apartment marketing ideas ever, but both your users and Google will get frustrated if it doesn’t load quickly on mobile devices. Removing JavaScript, desktop applications, and oversized images should boost your website’s speed.
Citations, Citations, Citations
A citation is an online reference to your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP). Like links to your website, Google uses them when evaluating your business’ online authority. You want quality local citations — not just any website linking to yours.
Be sure to create citations that are consistent and accurate. Your name, address and phone number should be the same every time you create a citation. Creating consistent citations will build credibility with search engines and give you instant traffic to your website.
Backlinks
Backlinks have been the number one ranking signal for a long time and they’re not going away anytime soon. Quality backlinks to your website is still essential if you want to rank above your competitors. These backlinks should come from local authoritative sites and could bring relevant prospects from the traffic alone.
These factors will help you rank locally in 2018, but they are just the start. Google is ever-evolving, and you’ll need to stay on top of these trends to stay visible to your audience. It’s also important to keep in mind that even though you make changes to your website, it will take up to 6 months for Google to change your local ranking. That’s why we always tell clients to think of the future when optimizing for local.
Whether you need help getting found locally or you just need some new apartment complex marketing ideas, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email or give us a call.
by threshold | May 10, 2018 | General
Although Facebook has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, it’s still one of the most effective advertising platforms that we, as digital marketers, have at our disposal. Anyone trying to come up with new apartment complex marketing ideas should be testing various strategies on the social media giant to see what works. Equally as important, however, is understanding why some methods work better than others.
In early 2018, Facebook made some changes to its News Feed algorithm that spelled trouble for business that weren’t paying attention. The advertising side of things hasn’t been affected, but brand pages are going to have to adapt to survive in this new News Feed.
“The first changes you’ll see,” Mark Zuckerberg said on January 11th, “will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.”
More posts from friends and family means fewer posts from companies and brands. Brands should still be posting updates, but it’s now more important than ever to be engaging and relevant with those posts.
At this point, you’re probably wondering how your pages can keep up with the changes. Pay close attention to this Zuckerberg quote from the Jan. 11th announcement:
“Pages making posts that people don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages that prompt conversation will see less of an effect.”
The brands that survive will be the brands that post great content. Your brand’s Facebook content should be shareable — it should prompt conversations and inspire interaction between friends.
Below, we’ve laid out five things we’re telling our clients to help them roll out new apartment marketing ideas that work with Facebook’s algorithm changes.
- Invest in more Facebook ads.
Increasing ad budget and using different types of ads can make up for the decline in News Feed exposure. Facebook gives priority to ads that use newer advertising methods, such as their new “Dynamic Creative Ads” which let businesses test variant ads to determine which features are most effective.
- Pay attention to the ad quality source
Changing out ads more often will reduce ad fatigue and boost the relevancy score. We recommend prioritizing quality over quantity by cutting back on unengaging “filler” ads and spending more on high quality paid ads that boost ad quality scores.
- Remember to be engaging
Quote from Facebook’s announcement — ““We will prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions.” We work with a lot of apartment communities, and we tell these clients that they should host resident events, have giveaways and promote partnerships with local businesses – these are the types of posts residents engage with.
- Don’t forget about Twitter and Instagram
Having a diverse social media presence will reduce the negative impact of Facebook’s algorithm change. Consider investing in a photographer or videographer for visual posts on Instagram, and remember to use new features like live videos on Twitter and Instagram.
- Be proactive with your Facebook page.
Engagement is a two-way street, and businesses will have to be proactive to combat the decline in News Feed exposure. Social media managers should be following people, liking posts and replying to comments on their posts and posts from local businesses.
So, you’re ready to combat the decline in News Feed exposure with new apartment marketing ideas. Now, let’s talk about a few tips to consider when crafting your new social media plan.
- Use video, because posts with video have a 109% higher interaction rate.
- Tag other pages, because tags will help you steal audiences from other companies
- Write blogs, because you know what kind of content your audience will share.
- Never spam for engagement, and avoid phrasing like, “comment/like if you agree!”
- Instead of recycling ads, test different copy and images to see what works best.
Between social media management and social media advertising, Facebook is a tricky tool to use properly. When it works it works wonder, however, so it’s worth taking the time to learn about best practices. Here at Threshold/Carve, we spend our days coming up with new digital marketing ideas for apartments. If you’d like us to handle your Facebook page so you don’t have to, please feel free to shoot us an email or give us a call today.
by threshold | Apr 27, 2018 | General
This post is part of our Guest Blog Series, and was written by Haley — our Digital Marketing Specialist.
In order to drive leads, it is essential to align campaign goals with the best blend of digital marketing ideas for apartments. Geofencing and Geotargeting seem similar, but they’re different in terms of how users interact with ads and the way conversions are tracked. In order to understand which service will help you reach your individual goals, we must first understand how each of them work.
Geofencing and Geotargeting: Definitions and Desired Results
THC partners with a leading programmatic platform to provide our clients with the best possible Geofencing solution. Here’s the definition of Geofencing, so we’re all on the same page:
“location-based display advertising served to audiences through means of geographically tailored location fencing.”
To break it down, this technology allows marketers to draw fences around nearby locations, serve display ads to users who walk within the barrier of the fence, and then capture the same users as a lead if they then walk into your business.
Targeted locations can be anything in the surrounding area that fit within goals for your apartment marketing ideas. Some examples of Geofenced locations include nearby competitors, local hotspots, and universities in the area. Geofencing meets users where they already are.
Our Geotargeting service is managed through the Google Adwords Display Network. Targeting is focused on two primary categories: location radius and audience targeting.
First, a specified mile radius is placed around the location’s address, and then targeting is narrowed down further using in-market audiences and demographics. This in-market audiences function allows us to tailor ads towards individuals who have already expressed interest in our client’s products or services. The ads are then served to individuals within the desired radius who match the custom targeting specifications. We use Geotargeting to reach users who are most likely to convert.
Geofencing & Geotargeting: Similarities and Differences
Both services serve display ads to users through their mobile devices, reaching users on the devices they use most often. These ads are served in apps and on websites within each service’s network.
The two services differ in how they capture leads. Geofencing leads are defined by users walking into your business after viewing your ad on their mobile device. The primarily goal is not to track a user’s online behavior such as how they are interacting on your website. The goal of geofencing is to see how many people who’ve been served your ads end up walking into your business.
Geotargeting, on the other hand, focuses primarily on the user’s journey through your website. A lead is defined by a user completing an action on the site after clicking on the display ad. The goal of Geotargeting is to garner clicks on the ads and track their behavior on the website after the click.
Match your Goals with our Apartment Marketing Ideas
In order to be successful in your digital marketing efforts, you must first decide what your goal is.
Are you looking for foot traffic in your office and in need of a way to directly target potential consumers at local hot spots and even competitors? If so, Geofencing is the service for you.
Are your trying to drive traffic to your website and gain online leads? If so, we recommend a Geotargeting campaign.
The THC team has launched campaigns on both services with proven success, and we highly recommend leveraging both apartment complex marketing ideas to drive leads. Feel free to shoot us an email or give us a call today to get started!
by threshold | Apr 9, 2018 | General
Digital marketing allows us to push apartment marketing ideas to an incredibly wide audience, but that’s just half of the digital marketing advantage. When we look beyond the targeted ads and the flashy website design, we find a wealth of data at our disposal. This data has builds up over time, but if we take the time to sift through it, we can glean insights into how people actually interact with various forms of digital marketing.
As a full-service digital marketing agency, Threshold/Carve has been designing, developing and hosting client websites for years. We have data telling us how users find websites, how they interact with the sites, and what they’re doing before they click away from the site.
In an effort to help our clients make smarter, more cost effective marketing decisions, we analyze all this data, spot trends and change our practices based on our findings.
Let’s dive into the data
Google Analytics data from our most-visited student housing websites can show us how 40,000 users interacted with these sites. Of the 40,000 people who landed on the homepages of these websites, 32,000 of them clicked on multiple pages.
An overwhelming majority of those users go directly from the Homepage to the Floor Plans Page.
Not all Floor Plans Pages are created equal, however. Floor Plans Pages with 3D Floor Plans have lower bounce rates than pages with 2D Floor Plans.
The data shows that 3D Floor Plans are a worthwhile investment, but the same cannot be said about professional photoshoots on the property. People don’t visit Image Gallery Pages nearly as often as they visit Floor Plan Pages.
In fact, the Gallery Page isn’t even the second most popular page. If people aren’t going to the Floor Plans Page first, they’re going to the Amenities Page. It’s only after they visit those two pages that they end up clicking to the Gallery Page.
Getting people to click around the site is great, but we all know that conversions are the most important statistic. However, only 40% of websites had the Contact Page as one of their top 10 most visited pages.
So, how do we respond to the data?
Should we display CTAs prominently on the Homepage, or would they make more sense on the Floor Plans Page? Should we spend a lot of time on the Contact Page, or should be putting contact info on one of these more popular pages? The answers are in the analytics.
We can use this data to improve website design and provide our clients with better strategies and marketing ideas for apartments. The data tells above has given us a few actionable items:
Instead of buying high quality images for the Gallery Page, properties should purchase 3D Floor Plans. The data shows that 3D Floor Plans lower the bounce rate on some of the most visited pages, keeping more people on the site for a longer amount of time.
We all know that clicks don’t matter as much as conversions do. Gathering contact info is a kind of conversion, and a key step in the sales funnel, but most websites aren’t getting a lot of clicks on their Contact Pages. This tells us that property websites should add contact forms and CTAs on their most visited pages — the Floor Plans Page, the Amenities Page and the Gallery Page.
UX design is about creating websites that are easy for users to interact with. However, users don’t always interact with a site the way we intended. We can create a better user experience by creating websites that are designed to be used the way people are actually using them.
Data-driven design helps us convert online surfers into online renters. If you’d like to learn more about how our apartment complex marketing ideas can help your properties prosper, please shoot us an email or give us a call today.
